FFM: Familiar tensions are coiled tight in La langue à terre

Brendan Kelly, The Gazette08.26.2013

Michel Breton, left, and Jean-Pierre Roy don’t try to hide their point of view in La langue à terre, but aren’t critical only of the anglophone community — the PQ also comes under fire for failing to adequately protect the French language.Marie-France Coallier
/ The Gazette

Michel Breton, left, and Jean-Pierre Roy don’t try to hide their point of view in La langue à terre, but aren’t critical only of the anglophone community — the PQ also comes under fire for failing to adequately protect the French language.Marie-France Coallier
/ The Gazette

MONTREAL — Jean-Pierre Roy and Michel Breton say they want to start a real dialogue with anglo Quebec. But I don’t think their film La langue à terre is going to win them all that much love and affection from English-speaking Montrealers.

The theme of their polemical documentary, which has its première at the Festival des films du monde Thursday, is that our city is under assault by the English language, and that if we don’t do something quick, the city — and the province — is zooming straight toward the same tragic fate as Louisiana.

It’s probably the subject that most divides anglos and francos. There are very few blokes who believe French is going away any time soon chez nous. Most of us feel we live in a city that is clearly mostly French, and we like it just fine that way. But there are many francos, like Roy and Breton, who are convinced Bill 101 has been so weakened over the years by court challenges that it’s no longer doing an adequate job of protecting la langue française.

“We had to do something,” said Roy. “We’d like to open some eyes. First of all, talking to francophones, explaining to them how our weak politics over the years have affected the quantity of French in Quebec. Since the second referendum, there’s been a lack of involvement by the politicians. Bill 101 was attacked several times.”

Roy and Breton make no effort to hide their point of view in La langue à terre. They think French is in danger in Montreal, and they bring in some strong nationalist voices to back up their argument, with many of the usual suspects weighing in on the language debate, including Josée Legault, Yves Michaud, Victor-Lévy Beaulieu, Pierre Curzi, and Biz from engagé hip-hop trio Loco Locass.

“À Montréal, je ne parle jamais anglais,” Biz says at one point, neatly summing up how many of the folks here feel.

Journalist Christian Rioux repeats his controversial argument about how the mélange of English and French is destroying the French language here, going so far as to say that comedian Sugar Sammy can’t even speak French properly.

“Even when he speaks French, he speaks English,” Rioux says.

Rioux’s point, which the filmmakers support, is that Sugar Sammy uses English grammatical structures when speaking in the language of Tremblay.

We got into a bit of a debate about that point — Sammy’s French sounds just fine to these untutored ears — but where we really duked it out was over the film’s portrayal of the anglophone community. The two anglos featured most prominently in La langue à terre are former Gazette columnist and Alliance Quebec executive William Johnson, an old-school language hardliner, and Suburban editor Beryl Wajsman, who is shown at a rally saying anglophones should stop paying tax to protest the province’s language politics. I politely suggest to the filmmakers that these two do not in any way represent the full spectrum of political views in anglo Montreal.

“We have the leaders we deserve,” said Roy. “You saw what Beryl Wajsman says: ‘If we don’t have a say, maybe we shouldn’t pay.’ ”

But that’s exactly the problem, I countered. I don’t know any anglos who are ready to throw their own little Boston Tea Party and overthrow the PQ government.

I asked the filmmakers if they really think that represents the anglo community.

“No, we know anglophones who are francophiles, who live in French and who understand the need to support le Québec français,” said Roy. “But there’s also the other side of the coin, which we don’t see very often.”

Interestingly, La langue à terre is also highly critical of the PQ, suggesting that successive governments, both Péquiste and Liberal, did nothing to stop the erosion of Bill 101. The film includes a lengthy section skewering former PQ premier Lucien Bouchard and his adviser Jean-François Lisée, who is now a PQ minister, for their attempt to woo anglophones after the last referendum. In fact, there are a couple of excerpts from Bouchard’s famous Centaur Theatre speech from that time.

I wondered aloud how history here might be different if the PQ had any success whatsoever in convincing anglos to support the nationalist project. Why wouldn’t it be possible to persuade a small minority of us that an independent Quebec is a good idea?

“They can’t vote for anyone but the Liberals,” said Roy. “There’s a political prison chez les anglos. The dream of an independent country, the dream of a French Quebec, vous n’êtes pas capable. You’d have to break with your tradition, and you’re also part of the global anglosphere. In fact, you’re not a real minority.”

That, I tell him, is another point we’ll just have to agree to disagree on.

La langue à terre screens Thursday, Aug. 29 at 7 p.m. at the Quartier Latin cinema, 350 Émery St., followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers. It also screens Saturday, Aug. 31 at 4:40 p.m. at Quartier Latin. Both screenings are part of the Festival des films du monde. For more information, visit ffm-montreal.org.

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